Case 100: Hard lockdown of public housing towers breaches human rights

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In 2020, after COVID-19 cases began emerging in nine high-rise public housing towers in inner north Melbourne, the Victorian Government imposed, without notice to residents, an extremely hard lockdown, detaining around 3,000 people in nine public housing towers. Restrictions were eased in several days for most of the towers, however, 400 people in one tower remained in hard lockdown for two weeks in total, unable to attend work, visit the supermarket or, for the most part, access fresh air and outdoor exercise. People subjected to the lockdown complained to the Victorian Ombudsman which investigated whether the lockdown complied with the Victorian Charter. Despite the obvious risk posed by COVID-19 in high-rise public housing towers, the Victorian Government had not prepared a COVID-19 outbreak management plan for the relevant public housing estates or for high-density public housing more broadly. When cases began emerging, senior health officials were worried about the situation and began discussing using public health powers to put the towers into quarantine with notice to the residents. Following a crisis cabinet meeting, the timeline for the quarantine was brought forward and no notice was proposed. The Deputy Chief Health Officer, who had the power to detain people in quarantine, was given 15 minutes before a press conference to consider the potential human rights impacts and sign the directions imposing the lockdown. The immediacy of the lockdown was not on her advice.

The Victorian Government had no contingency plans for the imposition of a building-wide ‘hard lockdown’ to manage an outbreak of COVID-19 within the Victorian community, let alone one imposed without notice late on a Saturday afternoon. When the lockdown was announced to the media, hundreds of police officers were immediately deployed to the public housing estates and directed people to remain in their homes. Chaos followed. People did not have access to food or medication. Urgent requests for medication were delayed or neglected. Information was confused, incomprehensible, or non-existent, especially for people from culturally diverse backgrounds. People did not know who was in charge. No access to fresh air and outdoor exercise was provided for over a week. The Ombudsman concluded that while swift action to address the public health risk in the towers was necessary, the immediacy of the lockdown was not justified, was not based on the advice of public health officials and led to many of the problems in the treatment of the residents. By imposing the lockdown without notice, the Ombudsman concluded that the Victorian Government had breached the residents’ right to humane treatment when deprived of liberty. The Ombudsman stated that proper consideration was not given to the residents’ rights when imposing the restrictions, as required by the Charter. The Ombudsman made recommendations including that the Victorian Government apologise to the residents and introduce greater detention review safeguards into public health legislation. While the Victorian Government refused to apologise, it did support amendments to public health legislation. Inner Melbourne Community Legal provided legal support to residents of the towers during the hard lockdown and has monitored Victorian Government responses to subsequent outbreaks in the towers in 2021. It reports that, while the government’s refusal to apologise continues to impede the rebuilding of trust required to respond to the pandemic, and accessible timely communication in community languages remains problematic, there have been significant improvements in the way government has responded to concerns about outbreaks in the last year. Notably, government has favoured a health response driven by community organisations and abandoned the heavy-handed police response that was a feature of the 2020 lockdown.

Source: Victorian Ombudsman, Investigation into the detention and treatment of public housing residents arising from a COVID-19 ‘hard lockdown’ in July 2020, 2020, Inner Melbourne Community Legal Centre